1. Field
The disclosed aspects relate generally to communications between devices and specifically to methods and systems for enabling backward compatibility in open market handsets (OMH).
2. Background
Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Further, many such cellular telephones are being manufactured with relatively large increases in computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs.
Still further, devices may be configured as OMHs. Currently, the OMH initiative is strategic effort aimed at enabling CDMA ecosystem with an open market handset. 3GPP2 has two approved standards C.S0023 Rev D version 1.0 dated Jun. 19, 2009 (Removable User Identity Module for Spread Spectrum Systems) and C.S0065 Rev B version 1.0 dated Jan. 25, 2010 “cdma2000 Application on UICC for Spread Spectrum Systems”. According to the standards, all CDMA ecosystem variables and features may be represented by Elementary Files in OMH/CDMA SIM (CSIM) cards. Each Elementary File has its own standardized structure and occupies certain amount of card memory. Further, C.S0023 compliant RUIM cards may have a master EF file (EF-CST: CDMA Service Table), which may indicate supportability of different services by a removable user identity module (RUIM) card. Still further, the OMH initiative has introduced a new revision (i.e. Rev D) of C.S0023 specification. However some operators provide services that are still based on C.S0023 Rev 0 and Rev B cards.
Thus, improved apparatus and methods for enabling backward compatibility in OMHs may be desired.